Barack Obama - Controversies

The images below provide links to controversies for Barack Obama. The information within these scandals is gathered from news reports, official data, and other information. The data is intended to be impartial and factual in nature. If there is information that you would like to see included or you believe that it is not impartial, please email us.

Throughout the summer of 2012, several facets of the government purchased a variety of ammunition in quantities and types that caused a number of people to be suspicious as to the purpose. This was compounded by changes to purchase orders after attention was brought to them.rnIn total, close to 1.4 billion rounds of ammunition was ordered between April and August of 2012. This ammunition primarily consisted of .223 ammunition for AR-15s or M16s. The largest purchase of ammunition was placed by t ...

Jon Corzine has been the Governor of New Jersey, a Senator from New Jersey, and one of the heads of Goldman Sachs. In March of 2010, he took over as CEO of MF Global, a company that had already experienced financial and regulatory problems. During his time there, he invested in the sovereign debt of Europe by purchasing bonds from PIIGS countries after they had been downgraded and anticipating that the European Union would reach a deal and the value of those bonds would increase. The rate that M ...

On July 16, 2012 President Obama was speaking at a campaign rally in Roanoke, Virginia. In that speech, he was discussing his desire to see taxes raised on higher earners in an effort to reduce the deficit and his view that those high earners were willing to pay more. He asserted that those high earners were aware that the businesses owned by those high earners were only successful because of the roads, infrastructure, and education of others. In doing this, he used the phrase "you didn't b ...

The Obama administration has charged more people (six) under the 1917 Espionage Act for the alleged mishandling of classified information than all past presidencies combined. Prior to Obama, there were only three such cases in American history, one being Daniel Ellsberg, of Nixon-era Pentagon Papers fame. Many of these cases involved whistleblowers using the proper channels to disclose illegal or improper activity only to see themselves prosecuted while those that carried out the illegal activit ...

In March of 2012, Wired Magazine released an article describing a facility being built in Utah by the National Security Agency (NSA) for the purposes of spying on the internet and telephone operations. The $2 billion facility is being built in Bluffdale, Utah for the purposes of intercepting, deciphering, analyzing, and storing vast swaths of the world’s communications and is expected to be operational in September of 2013. Once completed, the facility will cost $40 million a ye ...

The Constitution grants the President the power to appoint people with the advice and consent of the Senate, meaning that the Senate must confirm the President's appointments to the relevant offices. When the Senate is not available, or in a recess, the President can appoint people to those posts who remain in office until they receive the Senate's confirmation or until the end of the next Senate session. These are known as recess appointments.rnRecess appointments are not uncommon in a Presiden ...

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 created the Loan Guarantee Program in Title XVII. This program would allow the federal government to guarantee private loans that banks and other entities would make to emerging energy companies. The program required that the company pay a Credit Subsicy Cost (CSC). The Loan Guarantee program was slow to start, taking years to staff up, and years to develop the required system to monitor the loan guarantees to ensure they would be repaid. Republican and Democr ...

Throughout the summer of 2010, a controversy was unfolding concerning a mosque and community center that was to be built on grounds damaged during the 9/11 attacks. Critics of the project cited it's name, location, leader and source of funding as indications that the mosque was intended to be a "victory mosque" which would commemorate the victory of 9/11 for islamic extremists. Supporters note the legal right of the owners to build on the property and state that the project is meant to ...

After the retirement of Justice Stephens, President Obama selected Solicitor General Elena Kagan to be the next Supreme Court Justice. This nomination was controversial for the following reasons: Solicitor General Kagan had no judicial experience Elena Kagan's college thesis seemed to be sympathetic to socialist views An editorial written in college stated that was a devoted liberal She did not state that the commerce law could not be used to mandate items such as health ca ...

On July 7, 2010 President Obama used a recess appointment to appoint Dr. Donald Berwick to head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). In this position, Dr. Berwick is not only in charge of Medicare and Medicaid, but he is also in charge of overseeing the implementation of the 2009 health care reform legislation, which will include adding 16 million people to Medicaid. The appointment of Dr. Berwick to this position is controversial because: Dr. Berwick has openly ...

Inspector General Gerald Walpin completed two separate investigations in 2009 which showed a great deal of financial malfeasance was occurring under the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). Specifically, IG Walpin discovered that the head of the St Hope Academy and an assistant had misused federal funds for personal and political gain, and that the AmeriCorps project known as the Research Foundation for the City University of New York (RFCUNY) was granting teachers funds f ...

In April of 2010 the state of Arizona passed a law which took US immigration law and made it enforceable by state officials by making already existing US laws, state law. Supporters of the law saw it as simply enforcing laws that the US federal government were choosing not to enforce. President Obama opposed the law and stated that the bill was misguided and that he opposed it for the following reasons: it would lead to racial profiling it would lead to a patchwork of immigrat ...

Anwar al-Awlaki is an islamic extremist with known ties to terrorists such as Fort Hood Shooter Major Nidal Hasam, the attempted Christmas day "Underwear Bomber", and several 9/11 hijackers. Al-Awlaki was born in the United States and retains US citizenship, but has not lived here for several years. He has been a main recruiter for al-Quada, and it is suspected that he is now actively participating in the organization of attacks against the US. In April of 2010, it wa ...

On March 27, 2010 President Barack Obama announced that he would be making 15 recess appointments as the Senate left for its Easter Break. Recess Appointments - BackgroundArticle II Section 2 Clause 2 of the Constitution requires that the President obtain the advice and consent of the US Senate for appointments to a wide range of offices:He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and ...

In February of 2010, reports began to surface that the President's official campaign website "BarackObama.com" was advocating that supporters call talk radio shows and argue for the President's plan for Health Care. Accusations were also made that the website supplied talking points and asked the callers to use them in conversation with hosts if their calls went through.rnThe screen capture below from radio/BarackObama.com shows that the President's official campaign website not ...

On election day in 2008, two members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (NBPP) were seen and filmed standing at the entrance to a polling station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The men both wore uniforms of the NBPP, stood side-by-side while obstructing the entrance, and yelled racial slurs at would-be voters. One of the men carried a metal baton and tapped it in his hand. The incident was witnessed by lawyers and poll workers who indicated that not only did the events happen, ...

On January 7, 2009 President Obama announced that Cass Sunstein would be named the to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Professor Sunstein went through the confirmation process and was passed by the Senate on September 10, 2009 with the support of 6 Republicans and with 6 Democrats opposing the nomination. Given that the position occupied by Director Sunstein is an official appointment and that he went through the normal confirmation process, Director Suns ...

On May 19, 2009, Obama administration Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the appointment of Kevin Jennings as Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. Jennings is the third director of the office, which was established in 2002 during the George W. Bush administration pursuant to the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act part of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.Jennings started in that position on July 6, 2009, but even before he did ...

On August 4, 2009, Mark Lloyd was appointed to be Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. His past involvement in radio and TV and his previously stated positions on the government's role in media lead to designation of his position as the "Diversity Czar."Mark Lloyds appointment is controversial because of a number of comments he has made in the past concerning race and socialism. His comments are ...

In March of 2009, Anthony "Van" Jones was appointed by President Obama to the newly created position of "Special Advisor for Green Jobs". Not long after his appointment, questions began to arise concerning his socialist opinions and associations with socialist groups, comments about President Bush and Republicans, and his signing of a "911 Truth" website declaring that President Bush was involved with the 9-11 attacks. These questions led a number of Rep ...

Justice Sonia Sotomayor became the 111th Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in August of 2009. Justice Sotomayor served on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York from 1992 to 1998. She served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1998 until her nomination to the Supreme Court in 2009. Justice Sotomayor has a J.D. from the Yale Law School, and has taught at the New York University School of Law and Columbia Law Sc ...

In the summer of 2009, a friend of President Obama's was arrested after police responded to a breaking and entering call. President Obama's friend is African American and the arresting cop was white. Charges of racism ensued and President Obama made unsubstantiated claims about the officer's behavior. When his claims drew criticism, President Obama called for a beer summit with the arresting officer and the President's friend. Timeline of EventsOn July 16, 2009 ...

In the final days of the G20 summit of April 2009, the leaders of the nations attending the event were gathering for a photo opportunity. As each leader arrived they were informally introduced into the room and greeted by the other dignitaries. When President Obama entered the room, he proceeded to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and bowed while holding his hand. The bow was not a simple nod of formality or recognition. The President's upper torso was at a 90 degree angle w ...

In February of 2009, the Obama administration required the director of the Census Bureau to report directly to the White House. Some Congressional leaders believed that this was done to ensure that former Senator Judd Gregg did not interfere with the census outcome. Senator Gregg had been placed in charge of the Department of Commerce which is the bureau that normally oversees the census.rnCritics of the move asserted that there is no precedent for the Department of Commerce to be circumvented t ...

President Obama's aunt has been living in the United States illegally since 2000. It was discovered in 2008 that she was living in public housing in Boston. In 2010, she was granted asylum and allowed to stay in the United States Illegally in the USOn October 31, 2008, the Associated Press reported that Barack Obama's aunt, a Kenyan woman who has been quietly living in public housing in Boston, is in the United States illegally after an immigration judge rejected her reque ...

SummaryrnThe issue of President Obama's birth certificate is possibly the most widely discussed controversy in recent American history. This page shows the facts and events surrounding the birth certificate itself, as well as similar claims surrounding President Obama's birth. No conclusion is drawn from these facts. This page is updated often as new facts arise.rnSenator McCainrnEarly in the 2008 election cycle, numerous sources claimed that Senator McCain was born in Panama and therefore not a ...

SummaryrnIn January of 2008, a man named Larry Sinclair placed a video on youtube claiming that in 1999 he met State Representative Barack Obama in Chicago while on a trip there. He claimed that the two shared cocaine and that he participated in sexual acts with Representative Obama. He also challenged Representative Obama to take a lie detector test and agreed to take one himself.rnIn February of 2008, the website WhiteHouse.com agreed to sponsor and administer those tests with a prize if he pa ...

dReverend Jeremiah Wright served as the Head Pastor at the Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC) in Chicago from March 1971 to March 2008, taking the church from a small congregation of less than 250 members to a mega-church with approximately 8500 members. The church practices a form of Christianity which it calls Black Liberation Theology, which is to say that the life of Jesus Christ is a metaphor for the struggle of the African and African American people. The about page of th ...

d - Who are William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn?William Ayers was born to prominent philanthropists near Chicago in 1944. He attended public schools for much of his life, but switched to a small prep school during his second year of high school. After that, he earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan in American Studies in 1968. During his time at the University of Michigan, he became involved with the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a socialist group which f ...

Tony Rezko is a former engineer, real estate developer, and businessman who is now in prison on for wire fraud, bribery, money laundering, and attempted extortion as a result of a federal investigation known as "Operation Board Games". Mr. Rezko's businesses were in the district that Barack Obama represented when he was a State Senator for Illinois. Accusations have been made concerning contributions made to the Obama campaign. There is also evidence that the house Barack O ...